The girls’ senior year has started, but they still find time once in a while to hang out at the bookstore Sci-Twi discovered. • A Twin Canterlots anthology
A Twin Canterlots anthology—second in the Lectern’s Books series
The girls’ senior year has started, but they still find time once in a while to hang out at Lectern’s New and Used Books.
Set during the autumn semester of the Mane Seven’s senior year at CHS—most of season six.
Lectern’s New and Used Books was a venue for shopping and quiet conversation, as Lectern himself reminded the seven girls before him. “A concert would be rather, hm, antithetical to that,” he added with cautious politeness as he swept a hand through his thinning white hair. “Though it does seem in character for such a rambunctious crowd, I must say.”
“But it would be awesome!” Rainbow Dash burst out, waving her arms in an excess of enthusiasm. “The whole city’s getting behind the music festival! You wouldn’t want to miss out on that, would you, Mister Lectern?”
“I have plenty of books on music, Miss Dash, and not every business needs to be directly involved in a festival. Besides, how do you propose to make it work?”
Twilight Sparkle leaned forward around her boisterous friend. “The back patio would make a decent stage. It’s not big, but we wouldn’t need a lot of equipment for such a small performance. The audience can sit on picnic blankets in the yard.”
Bushy white eyebrows rose. “Et tu, Miss Sparkle?”
Twilight blushed and looked down at the countertop. “Um . . . well . . .”
“All right, for the sake of argument, let’s look at the idea. What about a permit?” Lectern put his hands, fingers laced, on the retired bar serving as check-out counter.
“We’ll get one,” Sunset Shimmer replied. “If we need to, we’ll bring it here and go over it with you.”
“Access. The backyard has only one gate. Even if the garage was cleared out and the side door opened, that surely isn’t enough to meet requirements.”
Applejack tipped her hat back and looked thoughtful. “Take out part o’ the fence an’ turn it into a big double-leaf gate.”
“And who would pay for it, Miss Applejack?”
“Tell ya what: You pay fer any replacement materials an’ we’ll provide the labor. We, uh, got a lotta carpentry practice up at Camp Everfree, an’ we got real good at reusing stuff. Plus, I got some temporary fencin’ in the barn if we end up needin’ it.”
Lectern looked around at the rest of the girls. “Are you all on board with this, girls?”
Nods and various exclamations of agreement assured him that, indeed, all of them were. He pondered for a few moments, inspiring more than one of the Rainbooms to hold their breath. “One last question: Why here?”
Dash mumbled something inaudible. Applejack sighed and amplified, “’Twasn’t until a week ago Dash even made up her mind about it, and then it was too late. Every place else is booked solid.” She shot a sidelong scowl at the procrastinator. “We told her this was gonna happen.”
“Hey, I had a lot of other things on my mind! We all did.”
“That much, alas, is true,” Rarity conceded ruefully. “It’s been a very . . . busy summer.”
The old man took a deep breath. “All right. If you girls do all the legwork—and other work—we’ll give it a try.”
Three months might seem like plenty of time to make ready—but between a new school year and magical shenanigans, not to mention all the other activities of busy lives, the Rainbooms found themselves squeezing in frantic preparations whenever they could, and the time flew by. They did catch some breaks along with the inevitable pitfalls; anticipating broad interest, the city provided stacks of permits and other applications to schools, social centers, and just about anywhere else people congregated, as well as access to on-line versions of the forms. Sunset was able to make good on her promise to handle the paperwork, with occasional reference to Lectern for permissions, signatures, and other niceties.
After much debate, they registered for the amateur tier rather than the more stringent—and more closely scrutinized—professional tier. That didn’t preclude selling tickets, but it did place a sharp limit on pricing and required designation of a charity or other deserving recipient of the proceeds. Rainbow Dash nominated the school’s athletic program, but Fluttershy lobbied surprisingly hard for the animal shelter. Both were worthy, and neither could get a consensus, so that was tabled for later consideration. Instead they opted for the vaguely worded boilerplate statement, since the program book had to go to press well in advance.
Posters went up. Advertisements appeared in the school newspaper and a handful of other outlets within their modest means, including the official program book sponsored by the city. Word of mouth worked its way through every crowd they could reach. Negotiations with a few local businesses, among them the Sweet Shoppe and Lectern’s itself, provided for refinements like drinks, snacks, and blankets printed with the businesses’ names or logos. Life became a mad whirl of schoolwork, practice when they could fend off other bands for time in one of the school’s music rooms, and increasingly urgent arrangements to make sure the big day itself would go as smoothly as they could manage.
With little more than a week to go, all seven were gathered in Lectern’s front room, paperwork covering the small round coffee tables serving the wing chairs in which they sat. “Okay, so we’ll start work on the fence tomorrow.” Sci-Twi checked off an item, her voice and manner distant. “That just leaves . . . um, who’s getting the money from our ticket sales. We still haven’t decided that.”
Immediately Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy resumed their debate. Applejack waved her arms for quiet. “Now hold on there. Ya both made yer cases. I wanna know if anyone else’s come up with somethin’ in the mean time.” She looked around at the others. “Girls?”
Sunset leaned forward and, in an unusually hesitant tone, responded, “I think . . . I might have a suggestion.”
Rarity crossed her legs and shot Sunset a piercing look. “Can we assume it has something to do with why you and Twilight have been terribly distracted all day, darling?”
Pinkie Pie interjected, “And why you mysteeeeriously disappeared this morning?”
“Can’t fool you girls.” Sunset nodded. “Yeah, it does. Twilight and I got yanked out of classes to go off-campus. We, um, we were taken over to the hospital to meet a patient.” She bit her lip. The others looked startled and increasingly curious.
Fluttershy said with characteristic concern, “Oh dear. Who was it?”
Sunset rubbed her upper arms and looked down. “Adagio. Adagio Dazzle. Aria and Sonata were there too. They’d been in her room all night, sleeping on the visitor chairs.”
Curiosity turned to outrage. “Why were you visiting them?” Dash’s demand cut through the general mutterings.
Fluttershy glared at her and put in, “I think a more important question is why they were at the hospital.” She turned back. “What happened, Sunset?”
Sunset’s stark description of the dressings around Adagio’s wrists—and the reason for them—shocked and horrified everyone, and she pulled a wry smile. “Yeah. Now you know why we were so upset.”
Twilight put down her clipboard and pen. “Look, girls. They’re . . . they’re all in really bad shape, but it still took all three of us—Sunset, the social worker, and me—to talk them into getting the help they need, even after everything that happened.”
“But that help’s gonna be expensive,” Sunset put in. “Remember what Cook told us about everything to do with the portal getting classified? That includes the Dazzlings. Any psychiatrist who sits down with them needs a security clearance, and there isn’t anyone qualified at social services who has one. So they have to go to someone else.”
“And that someone else ain’t cheap,” Applejack surmised with a rub of fingertips against thumb. “Makes sense. An’ you two wanna help pay fer it.”
Rainbow Dash was moving beyond irritation to anger. “Why should we do that after what they did to the school—and tried to do to us?”
Wearily, Sunset answered, “Because we helped put them in that position, Dash. Adagio asked us the same question: Why? Why help them?”
“I told them everyone deserves a second chance,” Twilight said stoutly. “Sunset told them it’s the right thing to do, and it is.”
Sunset looked around at the others, expression challenging. There was no doubt she was dead serious about her proposal. Twilight looked more nervous, but backed her up.
The rest looked at each other with varying emotions. Dash still radiated scorn. Applejack and Rarity looked troubled. Fluttershy was the picture of worry. Pinkie, looking a little sad, seemed convinced.
It took half an hour to persuade the holdouts to go along with the idea, partly because Sunset suggested an additional wrinkle that surprised even Twilight.
“Who thought it was a good idea to hold a music festival so late in the year?” Dash asked rhetorically, blowing out the words with a plume of steamy breath into the cold late-autumn evening air. All seven of them moved around on the patio-cum-stage, setting up for the imminent mini-concert. Her friends responded almost reflexively. “Beats me.” “Good question.” “Not a clue.” “Maybe someone on the city council?” “Someone who likes the cold!” “Um . . .”
Sunny Flare and Lemon Zest stood at the gap in the fence, having volunteered to take tickets. They’d come a long way from the standoffish, grimly competitive air they’d affected at the Friendship Games, and Zest especially seemed “jazzed”, as she put it, to be involved in the festival, even if at one remove. They grinned and joked with the mostly young crowd who’d come to support classmates or simply to try out an unfamiliar group.
Everyone looked up and blinked when Sunny suddenly appeared at the edge of the patio-stage and called softly for Sunset. The latter hopped over cables and around obstacles with alacrity for a whispered conference. Afterward Sunny nodded and trotted off to the sidewalk, vanishing around the front of the garage. A minute later, a small group all but tiptoed along the back fence from the walkway running beside the far side of the garage to the original gate. Sunset carefully took no overt notice, but turned and crouched as if to fiddle with her amp, then murmured, “Girls? They’re here, sitting near the back fence. Don’t look! If you absolutely have to, make it casual.”
When they did glance over their audience of three or four dozen, they noticed the individuals in question. Three of the figures were anonymous in hoodies and jeans. Clearly acting as their chaperone was an imposingly tall middle-aged woman with buzz-cut hair and a piratical eyepatch partially covering the scars spilling across the left side of her face. Her tough, raffish look was reinforced by an old bomber jacket, BDU pants, and black tactical boots, but an abrupt smile at the trio with her, apparently in response to a mumbled comment, lit up her face astonishingly. There was something odd about her right hand, too, but from fifteen feet away in the dim lighting, especially with the temporary stage lights in their eyes, it was hard to tell what.
They had to leave off their examination, though. It was show time.
Most of the hour-long set wasn’t new; there simply hadn’t been time for much songwriting, and the last-minute decisions regarding the Dazzlings tossed their original playlist into a cocked hat. Instead, a hasty tally of songs they knew by heart—both their own and covers—had been thrown together, ruthlessly excluding the numbers with which they’d competed in the Battle of the Bands.
“Everyone ready for a big night?” Dash shouted into the microphone. To the answering cheers, she yelled, “Then let’s have one!”
Pinkie led off the count, and the seven girls burst into song.
“This is our big night
We’re getting ready
And we’re doing it up right . . .”
It was a light, cheerful start. They followed up with more of the same—“Perfect Day for Fun” and “Time to Come Together”, along with a couple of bubbly pop tunes they’d picked up, alternating between their own and others’ work. The small group at the back sat stiff and wooden, even trembling slightly. Their companion’s attention was more on them than on the performance and seemed tinged with concern.
“Life Is a Runway” and “Rainbow Rocks”, paired with other songs of fashion and fancy, finished the opening. From there the Rainbooms moved to less frothy material, carrying the crowd along as the message changed. “I can see mosta y’all are here with friends to enjoy the music,” a beaming Applejack observed. “Yer friends are one o’ the most important parts o’ yer life. There was a time we forgot that, and bein’ reminded of it was a real adventure, I can tell you!”
They swung into “Better Than Ever” and on to “A Friend for Life”, again interspersed with covers. “Friendship Through the Ages” became something of a skit, Sunset moving around the stage, grinning like a fool and dancing a few impromptu steps beside each of her friends in turn. More covers sandwiched “Shine Like Rainbows” and “Hope Shines Eternal”.
By this time they needed a real break, hot and sweaty despite the cold and breath steaming like locomotives. With virtually no separation from their audience—the patio being only a foot above the ground and the nearest spectators sitting literally at its edge—they didn’t bother to douse the lights or leave the stage. Instead they simply sat or leaned, mopped their brows and grabbed bottles of soda or water, and chatted with the people who’d come to see them. The group in the back didn’t come forward, but they seemed more relaxed.
When the Rainbooms reassembled, retuning their instruments, Twilight came forward. “Friends are there to help you up after you fall,” she told the listeners quietly. “But it’s just as important to be willing to get back up and keep trying, even when you aren’t sure of yourself or anything else except the friends you can count on. We all learned that, and we want you all to remember it too.”
Pinkie once again started the count, and “The Legend of Everfree” rang out. Twilight raised her arms, waving encouragement to the crowd, and began clapping in rhythm. By the first chorus she had them shouting “hey!” along with the band, and by the end of the song nearly everyone in the yard was singing along. Even the hoodied trio were clapping.
“Legend You Were Meant to Be” and “Right There in Front of Me” continued the alternation with other heartening songs of inspiration. Then it was Sunset’s turn to step up. “When I first came to Canterlot High, I was . . . not a good person. I did some pretty terrible things, and it took getting knocked flat on my back to see how terrible they were. What I’ve learned is that, if you’re willing to do your best to make up for what you’ve done, you can make friends of people who used to be your enemies.” She took a deep breath, tapped her boot and counted, then bounded into “My Past Is Not Today”. If it wasn’t as polished a performance as some of the others, it was heartfelt. Her friends kept pace with the ease of long familiarity, and at the finale she flung both arms in the air.
When she caught her breath again, they segued into an old standby extolling how wonderful the world was. After it too trailed away, Dash waited a beat before saying in an unwontedly serious tone, “I’m sure you’re all wondering where the money from your tickets will go.” She took a breath. “A while back we had a run-in with some people. What they wanted to do was wrong, and we had to stop them. After we did, they took off. We high-fived each other and that was it.” She looked over at Sunset.
“We didn’t know what happened to them after that. We didn’t even think to check.” Sunset shook her head. “But we found out earlier this month their lives ended up in a really bad place, and it was partly our fault. The only good thing about it was, the hole they were in showed them how badly they needed help, and now they’re going to get it. It’ll be expensive, though, so the ticket money’s going to help pay for that help.”
The small group at the back of the crowd showed all the signs of shock, hands raised to half-hidden mouths. The woman with them wore a slight smile of approval. Everyone else applauded, though not without a certain quizzical air. It was to the latter Twilight spoke. “That’s all we can say, because we want to protect their privacy. We know it’s not a lot, but it’s the least we can do, and every little bit helps.”
Sunset struck a chord on her guitar. “It’s been crazy getting ready for the festival, so we didn’t have time to write any new material—except for our last song tonight. Fluttershy and I call it ‘Work in Progress’, and it’s for those folks who’re getting the money, and the help, they need.”
Lectern’s New and Used Books and its surrounding fashionable shopping district were, for a generous value of the phrase, more or less centrally located in the urbanized area of the valley. Not unreasonably far from the mall where the Rainbooms had held jobs over the summer, or Twilight Sparkle’s family home in an upscale residential neighborhood, or the smallish high-rise downtown, it was convenient enough to several of the young women—and to the minder who’d been foisted on them by a concerned government. As for the others, well, nowhere in the city was convenient to everyone, so the group was used to such compromises, no matter where they ended up hanging out on any given day.
“So then,” a straight-faced Cookie Pusher inquired seemingly idly, “how’s the new school year going, hmm?” He looked up from the Ponyville Express held open before him. The thin tabloid fluttered a little in the cool breeze sweeping across the raised patio at the back of the converted bungalow, where the whole group sat around a pair of outdoor tables pushed together.
A chorus of groans answered him, even from Sunset Shimmer—the proximate reason for the thirtyish diplomat’s presence—and Twilight Sparkle the avid student. The abrupt transition from summer break to the long and regimented daily schedule of their senior year had been a shock to the system for each of the high schoolers, complicating already busy lives. His eyes narrowed in amusement, but at least he didn’t laugh out loud. “Now, now. The year’s still young. I’m sure you’ll get your legs under you soon enough.” His tone was equal measures teasing and bracing. For some reason his audience didn’t seem properly appreciative, shaking their heads and grimacing at him.
After a moment Twilight sighed and raised her chin from its rest on one of her palms. “It’s not that we’re ungrateful, Cook—I mean, it was really nice of you to come out today and help us do some planning for university—but you have a terrible sense of humor.”
Cook grinned, the picture of insouciance, then replied more seriously, “It’s part of my job now to see what I can scare up in the way of scholarships and recommendations for you girls. And I’m more than happy to do it; you all deserve the best.” He twitched the rural weekly in his hands. “This is another part—entertaining as well as educational. I’m not just being diplomatic when I say it’s been a pleasant and productive day.”
Applejack looked up with a farmer’s eye at the clouds scudding slowly across the pale blue overhead. “We won’t be able to keep doin’ this past another month’r so. After that, the weather’s gonna start gettin’ too cold ’n’ wet fer hangin’ out here in the back yard. An’ some o’ the stuff we talk about or look at ain’t suited to the front room.” She glanced down meaningfully at the stack of newspapers and magazines from Equestria, the latest package from Princess Twilight Sparkle to the expatriate Sunset.
“We don’t always read the papers here anyway,” Fluttershy murmured to Cook. “Just when we happen to be here. But how will you keep reading them?”
“That’s no problem,” he assured the bashful girl with a smile, then nodded toward Sunset. “When I had lunch with Her Highness—and Sunset—a while back, she volunteered to arrange another set of subscriptions for me. It’ll be a little more trouble for poor Sunset, but I guess the idea is to send them both at the same time, so at least she won’t have to make more than one pick-up a week.”
“It’s fine,” Sunset assured them. “I don’t mind, especially with the help of you girls.” She eyed Cook sidelong. “And I’ll bet his bosses will like the idea for all kinds of reasons.”
“You have no idea.” Cook essayed a faint crooked smile as he refolded the Express and laid it on the table. “For one thing, I may be the first person to read them, but you can bet I won’t be the last.”
Rainbow Dash spoke up, voice and expression troubled. “Is that a good idea, Sunset? Cook?”
Sunset shrugged. “I don’t know, RD, but it was Princess Twi’s decision.”
“In fairness, I doubt she was just being impulsive when she offered.” Cook held out a hand palm-up toward the princess’s opposite number. “Both Twilights are very, very smart, and Her Highness is in effect an understudy to the other princesses, as I understand it, so I’m sure she’s learning a lot about statecraft. She might see it as a way to introduce her country, and her world, to ours in a non-threatening way.”
“Yeah, but—I mean, can’t spies get all kinds of information out of things like that?” Dash waved both hands. “Even Daring Do sometimes figures out secrets by reading newspapers and magazines, right?”
Rather than answer directly, Cook cocked an eyebrow at Twilight. “What do you think?”
Put on the spot, Sci-Twi fiddled nervously with her glasses for a moment. “Uh . . . I think the benefits would outweigh the risks. Besides, what could people really do with the information?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Build dangerous half-understood magical artifacts, maybe?” Cook’s tone was light, but a sober note lurked under it.
Twilight looked down. “Oh. Right.”
For a moment Cook put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed gently. “I apologize for rubbing salt in the wound like that, Twilight. If it’s any consolation, what you and Sunset have gone though is a red-flag warning about the hazards involved. Believe me, I wrote enough reports about it. But my real point is, Princess Twilight probably followed the same logic and came to the same conclusion.”
Sunset cleared her throat. “Speaking of magical artifacts, Cook, whatever happened to that mirror of Juniper’s?”
Twilight’s glance at her was thankful; Cook’s was humorous. “Don’t worry, Sunset,” he assured her. “We have top men working on it right now.”
Sunset looked unconvinced. “Uh, who, exactly?”
“Top. Men.”
A baffled expression crossed her face. “. . . Is that actually someone’s name, or—”
Cook shook his head and vented a lugubrious sigh. “Your friends have been sadly remiss in furthering your pop-culture education.”
Said friends were too busy muffling their snickers to reply immediately. Once they could, though, the spirited discussion that broke out drew in everyone, including Cook; his was a romantic soul reared on classic tales of history, intrigue, and action, as well as homages thereto—part of what had led him into the Foreign Service.
Inevitably other icons of pulp adventure quickly leaked in, Daring Do prominent among them, compared and contrasted as only fans will. Even Rarity had her own favorite, stoutly defended against the good-natured scoffing of Dash and Applejack. Cook’s deadpan admission to enjoying the same series drew gapes of astonishment from all and sundry, followed by Rarity’s swoon of appreciation.
At last Sunset held up her hands palm out and in a laughing tone exclaimed, “Okay, girls, we’ll rent the whole set some weekend and watch it together. How about that?” Unanimous agreement among the young women, including a double fistful of confetti tossed over the tables and their occupants by Pinkie Pie, carried the motion. Cook smiled but held his peace, and the conversation meandered on.
“‘. . . Shoes and ships and sealing wax, cabbages and kings’,” Cook misquoted as he recounted his unexpected introduction to the young royal who, along with Sunset, had set off the long chain of events ending with that meeting. The audience who’d demanded to hear about it listened avidly, though Sunset slouched, arms crossed and face somewhere between sardonic and self-conscious, as he continued. “We sat there in the coffee shop long enough for the waitstaff to start giving us dirty looks. It was pretty clear Her Highness was trying to get an impression of who I was and what I was about, especially when it came to her friends here in general and Sunset in particular. I wouldn’t say she was worried, exactly, but I certainly don’t blame her for wanting to make sure I wasn’t going to be a problem.”
“And you all know what a troll Cook can be,” Sunset interpolated, half amused and half snide. “We were there for so long because he went out of his way to egg on Princess Twi’s curiosity with long-winded answers about everything under the sun.”
“She asked.” Butter wouldn’t have melted in Cook’s mouth. “But yes, she could be the Elephant’s Child in person, and I had the feeling there was a lot about this world she wanted to understand. She seemed fascinated by the demographics of a technologically advanced world inhabited by a single sapient species, which makes sense given where she comes from.”
Sunset bit her lip; Cook gave her a inquisitive glance, but went on when she remained determinedly mum. “Her Highness had no idea what the sapient population is over there, which came as no surprise, so she just made some back-of-the-envelope guesses based on our world’s population during the time period that comes closest to their level of technology. That came out to around one and a half billion or a little more, split over more than a dozen species.” As an afterthought he added, “And don’t ask me how all those species haven’t competed each other into extinction, Twilight; I certainly didn’t ask her!”
Foiled, Twilight closed her mouth, sighed, and pulled out her phone to poke at it. “Our world’s up to around seven and a half billion, so that means only about one human in five has a pony—or, um, whatever—duplicate over there.”
“Not quite.” Sunset shook her head. “Spike, for instance.”
“Oh.” Twilight squinted at her. “That does complicate things, doesn’t it?”
“And Starlight,” Rarity observed. “Sunset darling, didn’t you say you brought her specifically because you haven’t met a Starlight Glimmer here?”
“That’s right! I haven’t heard of another Sunset Shimmer, either, and I think Cook said he didn’t find one anywhere in the city.” She glanced at the diplomat, who nodded corroboration.
“That doesn’t prove anything,” Twilight pointed out. “It’s a big world, and they might just live in other places. Anyway, we can take that one-in-five figure as a rough maximum.” She too gave Cook a speaking look.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” he replied with a shrug. To her narrow-eyed skepticism he added, “Look, Twilight, I’d love to know too, and I’m sure we aren’t the only ones, but that kind of study by its nature would be way too intrusive. The Census Bureau’s prohibited from collecting what they call PII—personally identifiable information—and the other government organizations equipped to do the job properly are intelligence agencies. Somehow I don’t think Equestria would consider that a very diplomatic way to handle it. Neither would our own public watchdogs, for that matter, and they’d be right to object. The best I could do on short notice was provide the princess with a bucketload of yearbooks from CHS and CPA, but you know as well as I do that isn’t exactly a scientific sample.”
The science maven perked up, to which he added, “I don’t think she’s finished with them yet. Would you be, in her shoes?” When she deflated again, Rainbow Dash stretched an arm to punch her shoulder lightly—by the athlete’s lights a comforting gesture.
Twilight’s smile in response was rueful but genuine. “I was just wondering whether—counterparts, I think you called them, Cook—are more common close to the portal, trailing off to a long tail with distance, or they’re evenly distributed around the world. I’ll bet that’s what she’s trying to figure out too, but you’re right, Cook. That kind of study would be pretty difficult.” She pulled a theatrically wistful face, inspiring tolerant giggles and snickers from her friends.
Pinkie jumped into the conversational gap with her usual gusto. “So when did you figure out it wasn’t Sci-Twi?”
“He twigged right away,” Sunset answered as a bemused Cook quirked his brow. “It was worth being there just for the look on his face. Kinda like the one he’s got right now.”
It took only a moment more for Cook to regain his equilibrium; with an air of magisterial dignity he ignored Sunset’s dig. “They really don’t look completely alike, if you think about it.” After a brief hesitation he admitted, “And I’d spent most of an afternoon, before I ambushed you all here that first time, comparing photos of them. I had a pretty good idea what to look for.”
Rarity tapped the tabletop with a perfectly manicured fingertip. “I do recall noticing how severe your uniform was, Twilight darling, and how unlike ‘you’—her, that is—it seemed to be.”
“Exactly.” Cook gestured with both hands. “The uniform’s a special case, of course, but the rest of your wardrobe, your body language, even your hairstyle, all are radically different from hers.”
“But—when I first walked around CHS, everyone knew who I was,” Twilight protested. “I mean, immediately. I mean, they thought I was her. Whatever. You know what I mean.”
“Well, the two of you don’t look completely different, either,” Cook countered. “Facial features, coloration, those are pretty much the same, with a few minor variations.” He waved a finger at the straight-cut purple bangs. “The stripes in your hair are a bit wider than hers, for instance, but they’re the same hues.”
Twilight’s eyes flicked upward involuntarily, and with a palpable air of unease she raised a hand to touch her fingertips to the bangs covering her forehead.
Cook eyed her shrewdly. “Think of her as an identical twin, okay? Your friends value you for who you are, not as a reflection of her. I’d say what happened at Camp Everfree is pretty good proof of that.”
“Darn tootin’,” Applejack put in stoutly as the others nodded or murmured their own assurances.
“I know,” Twilight replied in a repentant tone as she lowered her hand. “It’s just . . . weird knowing there’s another me out there who was friends with you girls before I was.”
“She’s not another you, Twilight. That’s what everyone’s saying,” Fluttershy pointed out patiently. “I’m sure we could tell you apart even if you both put on the same outfits. It’s not just your looks that are different.”
“I guess you’re right,” Twilight admitted in a less troubled tone. “Still—” Her thoughtful mien turned to a pouty frown when the others groaned or rolled their eyes. “Hey! You just made a big deal about how different I am from the princess, okay? But from what she said at that picnic after the Friendship Games, it sounded like her pony friends are a lot more like you girls than that, and now I’m wondering why.”
A hesitant silence greeted the implicit question. Cook pointedly sat back, declining to answer. Sunset gave him a disgusted look, which she extended to everyone else when they too said nothing. “Fine. I guess it’s up to me.”
She sighed and turned back to Twilight. “They made friends with her a year or so after I ran away through the portal. Ever since then she’s been living with them in a small farming town, most of it as the town librarian, and having adventures.”
A whole series of expressions flashed across the young scholar’s face as she processed the information—and the numbers that went with it. “Oh. So she’s had something like two years to—”
“To get a head start,” Sunset finished gently. “I bet you’re a lot more like the way she was back then, when Princess Celestia pushed her out of the nest.”
“More’n that.” Applejack’s tone was notably reluctant, as if the words were being dragged out of her. “Sounded t’ me like Princess Celestia was tryin’ her best t’ be a good mentor fer pony-Twi, but I sure didn’t get that kinda feelin’ about Principal Cinch, or fer that matter anyone else at Crystal Prep. Well, ’cept maybe Dean—uh, Principal Cadance.”
“Yeah, remember that talk we all had with Sunny in the front room?” Rainbow Dash chipped in. It wasn’t the most politic reminder, as winces all around testified, but it was very much on point, and nods followed. “AJ’s right. Princess Twi’s had a lotta support, but, um, I guess you’ve kinda had the opposite, Sci-Twi.” Her voice ran down a little at the end, but she finished with dogged determination.
“What matters is you’re here now, with us,” Pinkie insisted, her tone bracing. “And you’re learning, like we all are. You’ll catch up in no time!” She bounced up from her seat to squeeze Twilight in an enthusiastic hug. A muffled sound suspiciously like oof escaped her victim, though the embrace also was returned gratefully, if a little hesitantly. A moment later Pinkie just as abruptly let go and plunked back onto the chair.
Once released, Twilight straightened her hornrim glasses and her posture. Her intent face looked not unlike Spike’s when he encountered an exceptionally gnawable bone. “So, anyway, I guess counterparts can vary a lot. Some are more alike than identical twins, like you girls. Others are more different than fraternal twins or even normal siblings, like that Filthy Rich Sunset told us about. And the rest are somewhere in between, like me and the princess.”
Sunset looked blank for a moment. “Oh. Yeah, him.” She glanced back at Cook. “After we got back from camp, I wrote to Princess Twi all about the trip. I, uh, was kinda nasty about the guy who was bugging Glori and Timber. She was boggled. Turns out there’s a Filthy Rich in Ponyville—his family’s run the biggest store in town since the place was founded. He’s not the nicest stallion in the world, and he drives a hard bargain, but she told me she couldn’t imagine him ever being that mean and ruthless.”
“Yeah, I read up a bit on the local version during my initial investigation. He’s something of a small-time real-estate tycoon, which is rather far afield from retail. That’s a good point.” Cook cocked his head. “Really, though, the strangest thing is that counterparts exist at all. The butterfly effect should make the two worlds completely different.”
A chorus of perplexed questions gave him pause. Twilight explained, “It’s from chaos theory, the idea little changes in starting conditions can make big differences in end results. The exact time a tornado forms and the exact path it takes might be influenced by all kinds of tiny things like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings weeks before and thousands of miles away.”
Cook endorsed the explanation with an amiable tilt of the head. “So the question isn’t ‘why are the worlds so different?’ It’s ‘why are they so similar?’”
Sunset let out a snort. “We talked that one to death before you came along, Cook. All we could come up with is, there must be some kind of connection between the two worlds that lets them influence each other somehow. How much influence—and whether the portal’s what makes the connection or the connection’s why the portal can reach this world—we have no idea.”
Cook blew out a breath. “As the old scientist said, ‘My own suspiction is that the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose.’ I’d hazard a guess the amount of influence might be ‘more than we think’—but it must be pretty loose, since the worlds are so different in a lot of ways.” He looked down at his hands, turning them over as if seeing them for the first time. “On the other hand, it might explain some things, like the way we’re colored so differently from other animals. Maybe magic’s been leaking into this world for a long, long time. It would make as much sense as any of the hypotheses floating around out there.”
Sunset’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “The crystal cave near Camp Everfree, where our geodes came from—Princess Twi thought my description of it sounded like the cavern where the Tree of Harmony is. And, well, our marks.” She tapped her autumn-orange top with a fingertip, where a familiar roiling sunburst was blazoned.
Her friends nodded; Cook mused, “I’ve come across mention of those before, but not in any detail.”
Sunset took a deep breath. “Okay, here goes. Pony Marks 101 for the uninitiated. . . .” Even the other girls, who’d heard it all before, listened raptly to the ensuing explanation.
By the time she finished, Cook’s eyebrows were halfway to his hairline. “Huh. That’s . . . wild.”
“I guess,” Sunset responded in a guarded tone. “But the reason I brought it up is—well, look at everyone. Twilight and her stars. Fluttershy and her butterflies. Rarity and her diamonds. Pinkie’s balloons. Dash’s cloud and lightning bolt. Applejack is so obvious I’m not even gonna. And you, Cook.” She pointed unerringly at the small device embroidered on his polo shirt. “Chocolate-chip cookies on a silver serving tray. Why?”
Nobody answered, and Sunset went on after a pause, “Princess Twi’s pony buddies have the same marks on their haunches. Principal Celestia wears that little cloisonné pin of the sun, and it looks just like the mark on Princess Celestia. I’ll bet that’s true of Vice-Principal Luna’s moon pin and Princess Luna, now that she’s back. If that isn’t a sign of influence, I don’t know what is.”
“But . . .” Rarity frowned. “If that’s so, what about the much larger population in this world? And not every counterpart in the other world is a pony, I gather. What about them?”
“Not a clue, Rarity. All I can say is, I see what have to be similar marks on people’s clothes or accessories. Maybe not on everyone, and maybe not every time, but lots of people lots of the time. Think about the Crystal Prep girls. Even with their uniforms, they find ways to show marks like that. And if Cook went through the portal for some reason, bits to biscuits he’d end up with that serving tray of cookies stamped on him.”
Cook shot Sunset a piercing look, then sat back and stared into the middle distance. “Military uniform regs specifically prohibit ‘personal emblems’, as I recall. That’s got to be related.”
“Wow. Yeah.” Sunset looked taken aback. “I never thought much about it, but armor and a lot of uniforms back home cover the marks. I mean, I can understand why armor does, but uniforms?”
“Helps with corporate identity.” Cook rubbed his chin. “Individual identity’s important in civil society—ours, at least—but a military service has to emphasize the group over individuals, or it’ll fall apart under stress. Combat is as stressful as it gets.”
During this byplay Twilight blinked away a distracted manner, then stood suddenly enough to draw the puzzled attention of everyone else. She held out the hem of her patterned skirt and peered down at it. “Sunset?” Her tone seemed a bit strained. “This is mine—and hers—right?”
Sunset leaned to the side for a look and nodded. “Yeah, pretty much. There are a few small differences, but like I said, it’s amazing how similar they are.”
“And there are five little white stars?”
“Yeees. . . .” Now Sunset regarded her warily.
“So . . . each of the stars is one of her friends.” Twilight looked up, manifestly distressed. “I just figured that out. But—I have five too.” She raised a forefinger to count off the other young women around the table. “There are six of you.”
Another moment of uneasy silence fell before Cook bent forward to touch the tip of a forefinger lightly to one of the white rays emanating from behind the large central magenta starburst. “The sixth one is right here, Twilight.”
Sunset’s friends ask her what music is like back home
Lectern’s New and Used Books, and the street running alongside the converted bungalow’s back yard, echoed with unaccustomed activity as five teenage girls labored to convert part of the wood fence to a double-leaf gate. Most of the noise was hammering of one sort or another, though voices figured prominently as well—particularly Applejack’s, in her role as straw boss on the project. Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie supplied most of the remaining muscle, with Rarity and Twilight Sparkle handling tasks calling for coordination rather than strength. It wouldn’t do to flaunt their transformed magical talents in public, so they constrained themselves to more conventional methods—except when they could conceal a little magical help in some fashion.
Sunset Shimmer and Fluttershy sat at one of the weathered round redwood tables gracing the terra-cotta patio not far away. Though the weather was a little cold for comfort, they were determined to be with their friends even when working on a different project. Songwriting had fallen by the wayside over the last three frantically busy months, but all the Rainbooms wanted at least one new song for the late-autumn music festival now just a week away.
Brows furrowed in thought, the pair bent over music sheets scrawled with notes and notations and conferred in low, brief phrases. The pencils in their hands tapped or scribbled. Occasionally one or the other would hum a snatch of tune or sing a phrase, testing it out. Finally Fluttershy rubbed her eyes with the heels of her palms; Sunset sat back, blowing out a breath. By tacit agreement, it was time for a rest.
“What about a title?” Sunset asked half-rhetorically. “I can’t think of anything appropriate that isn’t hopelessly cheesy or pompous.”
“Well, let’s see,” Fluttershy responded thoughtfully. “We’re going to donate the ticket sales to the Dazzlings’ therapy care. The song is about how they’re going through a lot of changes, and how they still have a long way to go, but they’re working on it.”
“And from what I was told they still have an affinity for music, even if right now they’re pretty sensitive about it. Hmm. ‘Working on It’? No, that isn’t quite right.”
Fluttershy nodded in agreement. “I like the idea, though.”
Seeing the pair no longer absorbed in their collaboration, Twilight called out humorously, “How’s it going over there? Are you finished or is it still a work in progress?”
The songwriters stared at each other and in unison cried, “That’s it!”
“That’s what?” Pinkie asked quizzically.
“We were just wondering what to call it,” Sunset explained. “‘Work in Progress’ is perfect.”
“You’re welcome,” Sci-Twi said cheekily, inspiring general giggles and snickers. Sunset grinned, gratified by Twilight’s breezy, cheerful mood—a wonderful change from darker days haunted, sleeping or waking, by the specter of Midnight Sparkle.
Much later all of them sat around two of the tables pushed together, as was their habit when occupying the patio. “Sprawled” perhaps was more accurate; all of them were tired but pleased with their day’s work. They still had enough energy to try out the mostly completed song a cappella in quiet tones, familiarizing themselves with the lyrics and structure, showing up weak points that weren’t apparent to Fluttershy and Sunset alone. After a couple of run-throughs and the resulting jotted corrections and reminders to work on more, everyone was quiet for a time, simply resting and enjoying each other’s company.
At last, though, Dash spoke up idly. “So you told us about learning electric guitar, Sunset, but I gotta ask: What’s the music like where you come from? If they don’t have electricity most places, they can’t have electric guitars, right?”
Sunset chuckled and teased, “There’s hope for your jock brain yet, RD.” She ducked a thrown work glove and stuck out her tongue at her assailant, then continued more seriously. “You’re right, of course. Electric instruments, much less any digital technology, have to be way in the future back home.” She paused for a moment’s reflection; “home” had become a complex word for her. The others, by now able to follow their friends’ thoughts pretty well, blossomed with small, supportive smiles.
“You’d recognize it—it’s not that different—but it probably would sound pretty old-fashioned to you. Let’s see. . . . Recording is just getting started. There’s sheet music, and the new high-speed printing presses are making that lots cheaper and easier to get, just like magazines and newspapers.” Sunset waved a hand at her bookbag, where she often carried the Manehattan, Canterlot, and Ponyville newspapers sent her by Princess Twilight. “Musical instruments aren’t a whole lot cheaper, even here, than they were before industrial production, but they’re a lot easier to find. I’ll bet you can remember your grandparents’ or great-grandparents’ generations having a piano in almost every house.”
Most of her audience nodded, and Applejack said, “Heck, we have one.”
“There’s more emphasis on instruments that are easier for hooves or levitation—trombones more than trumpets, for instance, and a lot more of what you’d call lap slide guitars here, instead of the kind we play.”
Twilight pushed her glasses back up her nose with a fingertip. “You mentioned recording. I guess that would be things like player pianos and cylinder phonographs?”
“Yep! In fact, the last I heard, the first disc phonographs are selling like hotcakes, which puts them a little ahead of your history, I think.” Sunset grinned and waggled her eyebrows challengingly; the others laughed.
“So far, darling, we’ve seen some of that for ourselves in the newspapers,” Rarity pointed out. “In the advertisements, if nothing else. Though I admit I hadn’t anticipated the differences in what kinds of instruments are more popular.”
“Mm, good point. Okay, what else?” Sunset pondered a moment. “How about this: All that newfangled technology is making it easier for individual ponies—people—to make their own music, or to get it for themselves, so popular music is starting to spread at the expense of formal music. That’s where the action is.”
“So in another hunnerd, two hunnerd years they’ll have jazz, country-western, rock and roll—or at least music kinda like that,” Dash said. “And orchestras will be playing stuffy old-people music.” She looked a little defensive. “At least, that’s what younger ponies’ll say, right?”
Sunset propped her chin on a hand. “That would be my guess, yeah, but it might sound pretty different. I’m sure it’ll be just as complex and varied, but who knows what kinds of influences will go into it?”
“Magic,” Pinkie Pie put in with a wave of her arms over her head. “What about that?”
“Oh, it has some impact, but not as much as you might expect.” To the others’ raised eyebrows, Sunset went on, “Think about it. If magic can do it, why develop technology? Why is Equestria going through an Industrial Revolution at all?”
“I . . . never thought of that,” Rarity answered, taken aback. The others nodded in agreement, though Twilight looked thoughtful—clearly she’d wondered, even if none of the others had.
Sunset’s grin turned sly. “The answer’s pretty simple, just not obvious. Technology can be scaled up . . . but magic can’t, at least not very well. It takes a whole team of ponies, even magically strong earth ponies, to haul a train; a single locomotive does it better and faster. A crane can lift big heavy loads more efficiently than a crew of unicorns.” She made a claw of her hand and mimed a crane.
“Now, if it’s a small job, or a specialized one for an expert craftspony, yeah, magic can do some pretty amazing things. There’s a really popular singer right now who’s pioneering the use of unicorn spellwork to produce some of the same effects we get here with vocoders. How they’re doing it, I haven’t a clue. Remember, I was a student, not an expert.”
“If it’s that hard to do,” Twilight mused, thinking hard, “it might stay just a gimmick. It could be a really good gimmick, but . . .”
“But she won’t have a lot of competition, and it may not have a big long-term effect,” Sunset finished.
Dash broke in again. “But didn’t you tell us they can control the weather there? I mean, we can’t do that here at all, so that has to be something only magic can do, right?”
Sci-Twi commented pedantically, “A lot of scientists aren’t sure it would be a good idea even if we could—well, for our world, at least.” She glanced over at Sunset. “And I’ll bet there are limits to what weather ponies can do.”
The quondam unicorn shrugged. “I’m not up on the fine points of pegasus magic, but I’m pretty sure they have to work with whatever the local climate is. I think they can push the limits some, but if they go too far or too long, the results could be pretty bad. If they’re working in, say, a desert, they can’t make it rain all the time like it does over a tropical forest. So there’s only a little rain, but they can decide when and how it falls.”
Applejack whistled. “Even that much must make farmin’ a whole lot easier.”
“Sure does. Sometime I’ll have to tell you girls the whole story of the founding and Hearth’s-Warming. Anyway, the point is, technology is better than magic for big jobs, and makes it easier for the average pony to do a lot of things. Judging from the history here, I’ll bet that’s what’ll have the biggest effect on music.”
The discussion drifted in a technical direction, with more specific questions and topics. Sunset ended up humming or singing a range of tunes from memory, from old folk songs out of all the tribes’ traditions to recent favorites. The others agreed even the latter did sound old-fashioned to rock-attuned ears, but enjoyed them all nonetheless—if nothing else, for the glimpse they gave of another world the imported newspapers and magazines couldn’t provide.
At last the lot of them ended up singing an old round dating from Equestria’s early days, celebrating the new nation’s unity. Sunset directed the parts based on the tribes of her friends’ counterparts, and after a few stanzas they all collapsed into giggles, exhausted but happy.
“You know,” Rarity murmured thoughtfully, “we couldn’t perform the songs that really give away their sources, Sunset darling, but a good many of the songs you’ve sung us work just as well here as they do in your homeland. I wouldn’t mind performing some of them once in a while.”
Sunset sat back with an odd expression. “I never thought of that. I . . . the Rainbooms are more of a rock band. Would that work?”
Dash waved her arms dismissively. “Who cares? I think it would be awesome to branch out a little.”
“And it would be a nice way to honor your country and your world,” Twilight added.
“Besides, we all know ya get homesick once in a while.” Applejack smiled crookedly. “’Less ya think it’d be too much?”
“No—no, I think it would be great!” Sunset blinked a few times and finally raised a hand to brush at her eyes. “I don’t think we could do it for the concert coming up, which is too bad, but yeah, once we get some practice in on some of them, I’d love to.”
Pinkie just drummed on the table enthusiastically, leaving no doubt of her agreement, and Fluttershy nodded with a smile.
Rose Brass thanks the Rainbooms for the concert tickets
Lectern’s New and Used Books was a cozy shelter against the blustery wind and light snow. The recent music festival’s cold but clear night seemed a distant memory to the seven teens curled up on the front room’s wing chairs, buried in their studies. With winter closing in, they were spending less time in the bookstore, but upcoming exams—as well as a bit of guilty loyalty to the shopkeeper who more than once had gone beyond the call of duty on their behalf—had brought them together to share notes and quizzes.
It was a slow evening for the store, but not a completely dead one; traffic shuffled in or out occasionally. The blasts of cold air admitted with the irregular openings of the double-leaf front door had driven the girls to monopolize the chairs closest to the merrily crackling fireplace. By now they didn’t even look up when it opened again to let in another muffled newcomer.
A black-dyed rabbit-fur ushanka and an antique military greatcoat, both in immaculate condition, covered the tall, rangy figure who glanced around and, after a moment, spotted the group of students. A few long strides brought the visitor close enough for them to look up at the interruption. Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle both let out startled exclamations of recognition.
“Rose!” “Ms. Brass!”
The unique brass-complexioned face, complete with scars and eyepatch, grinned at them. “Hello, Sunset—Twilight. Why don’t you introduce me to your friends?” The right hand—a sophisticated prosthetic—pulled off the fur cap, exposing buzz-cut platinum hair. The other began to unbutton the coat.
Both girls fumbled for a moment until Sunset said, “Girls, this is Captain Rose Brass, the social worker who’s working with the sirens. Rose, these are my best friends.” She pointed and named each in turn; nods and cautious greetings were exchanged. “And you know Sci-Twi, of course.”
Rose laughed, plainly delighted by the nickname. “Indeed I do, and I want to apologize again for putting you on the spot, Twilight. But I also want you to know that I’m grateful for your help.”
Twilight swallowed and replied, “It was hard, but like Sunset said, it was the right thing to do.”
A firm nod acknowledged what the younger woman said—and didn’t say, such as “you’re welcome.”
“So why did you come by, Rose?” Sunset asked curiously. “And how did you find us? I can’t believe this is just a coincidence.”
“Of course not,” Rose agreed. “The address is on the tickets you sent. It wasn’t hard to figure out you girls must hang out here, so it was just a matter of stopping by every evening. I even did a little shopping.”
“You?” Twilight burst out, then clapped a hand over her mouth and blushed.
The older woman rolled her good eye drolly. “I’m not a barbarian, Twilight. I do read once in a while, though I admit our tastes probably don’t have a lot in common.” She met Sunset’s eye again. “To answer your other question, Sunset, I wanted to thank you and your friends for the tickets and for the donation.”
Sunset grinned. “It was a pretty tough sell. And I wasn’t sure you’d be allowed to use the tickets.”
“I’ll bet it was.” Rose’s voice shifted to a more serious tone. “A month ago, I might not have been, but now that they’ve agreed to counseling and we’ve had a good long talk, I was able to strike or reduce some of the restrictions on them. They still can’t meet you face to face, but as long as they’re chaperoned, they can be in the same general area. That’s why we were able to attend the concert.”
“And you can talk to us about them, too, at least a little,” Sunset guessed shrewdly, to which Rose nodded confirmation.
“They didn’t seem ta be very happy ta be there at first,” Applejack observed.
“No, not at first. When they trooped into my office, oh, months ago now, just the mention of music make them flinch.” Rose looked into the fire pensively. “That’s another reason I brought them to the concert. It’s not good for them to abandon something that’s so fundamental to their natures. I don’t have nearly the depth of knowledge Sunset does, of course, but I’ve picked up that much about people from her world.”
Pinkie Pie volunteered, “I saw them clapping along later, though!”
Rose smiled; Pinkie tended to have that effect on people. “Yes they did. They weren’t willing to sing along, and I can’t blame them for that, but by the end of the evening it was pretty obvious they were feeling a lot better than they had in a long, long time. I wouldn’t breathe a word of this to them, but I really do think the concert helped—broke the ice, as it were.”
Rainbow Dash wore a peculiar expression, ambivalent even now. “I’m still not sure how I feel about any of it. I guess Sunset and Twi are right, but . . .”
“But you still resent them.” Rose turned a penetrating look on Dash. “And maybe more than that.” When Dash bridled, she added, “That’s perfectly natural. What they did was pretty nasty. But remember this, Rainbow Dash: They’ve been punished with a life sentence. They’ll never have magic again, as far as anyone—isn’t it ‘anypony’, Sunset?—can tell. How would you feel if someone ripped away your magic, now that you have it?”
Dash looked a bit stricken. “Y-yeah. I get it.”
There was a moment of quiet as all of them digested this unpalatable tidbit. Rose waited respectfully, then said briskly, “I should leave you all to your studies, and I still have a few errands to run myself.” Her smile turned crooked. “You can be sure that right now they feel about all of you the same way Dash does about them, but I think in the long run it’ll work out. Good evening, girls, and thanks again.”
A chorus of acknowledgements answered, to which she nodded before turning and striding once more for the door. After she left, the whole group stared after her in silence. At last Fluttershy whispered, “Is she always like that, Sunset?”
Lectern’s New and Used Books bustled with holiday shoppers on a snowy weekday evening. The resulting noise level, though a bit of a nuisance for the seven teens curled up on wing chairs by the front parlor’s merrily crackling fireplace, did not greatly impede their group study session. It was only when a familiar voice, apparently asking questions of a store staffer, wafted from the direction of the retired bar serving as check-out counter that Twilight Sparkle looked up in mild surprise and adjusted her big squarish eyeglasses. Distracted by the movement, her companions glanced at her, then followed her gaze; Sunset Shimmer, whose back was to the entryway, levered herself up with one knee on her chair’s seat and laid a forearm across its back.
“Hey, Chips,” she called out in a friendly voice. “We haven’t seen you in here before, I don’t think.”
The skinny young man in open parka over turtleneck and slacks twitched; his expression upon turning was quizzical and uncertain. “Uh—h-hi, Sunset,” he half-stuttered.
“Oh, right.” Sunset rubbed her forehead with the hand not balancing her on the chair. “I don’t think I ever apologized about that lunch-money thing in the hallway, did I?”
Micro Chips blinked behind spectacles only slightly more stylish than Twilight’s before letting out a laugh that seemed to startle him as much as it did the girls. “I guess you just did. I’m sorry too.” His brow furrowed and he paused, mouth open, plainly reconsidering discussing magical shenanigans in a public place. “I kinda jumped to conclusions and didn’t give you a chance to explain, didn’t I?”
“Fair.” Sunset nodded.
Before she could continue, Twilight spoke up again. “So what brings you to Lectern’s? Sunset’s right—I don’t think I’ve seen you in here before.”
“Holiday gift shopping for the family and some friends.” One purplish hand held aloft a high-end smartphone, displaying what looked like a list of some sort, as Chips strolled closer and lowered his voice to a more conversational level. “With all us kids getting older, it’s getting harder to come up with ideas, so I’m trying to be more creative. Lectern’s has a pretty good reputation on the Web, and I figured, hey, I can probably find a book or something for almost anyone if I look for the right subjects, and get a lot of it done all at once. Couldn’t hurt to try, anyway, right?”
“Right,” Sci-Twi replied firmly through a broad grin. “I mean, look at the girls here. We’ve all found books to buy, and Mister Lectern does a really good job running the store.”
Chips cocked his head. “Does he really live upstairs?”
Twi nodded. “That’s the way it’s set up, as far as I know. I looked into the city records a couple of years ago, and there’s a waiver that lets the owner live on the premises as long as the business is operating and vice versa. Nobody I talked to knows how that happened—even back then, there were zoning laws that wouldn’t have allowed it, but the original owner must have talked the city into it somehow. I don’t think even Mister Lectern knows, because he bought the store from the family. They weren’t interested in running it, but they didn’t want to see it go away, either.”
“Huh. That’s a pretty strange little piece of history.” On the heels of this observation came a querulous ping from the smartphone still in his hand, and he lifted it for a brief squint at the screen. “I guess I should get going. Sorry. I’ll see you all later.” He turned away, hesitated, and pivoted back. “Oh yeah! Twilight, you might be interested. We won the Worldcon bid! I’m on the committee, and we’ll start meeting soon for planning.”
Twilight looked thrilled. “Really? A Worldcon, here? That’ll be great!” She thought a moment. “Of course, by then we’ll all be graduated from Canterlot High, and probably pretty busy with university, but if I can possibly make it I will. It’d be my first Worldcon, after all! Thanks for letting me know, Chips.”
Chips grinned and waved acknowledgement before moving off toward the back of the two-story bungalow and the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves that awaited.
Twilight found herself faced with six nearly identical expressions of baffled curiosity. Sunset spoke for all of them. “What’s Worldcon?”
“The World Science-Fiction Convention, the biggest and oldest SF con in the world!” Sci-Twi replied with enthusiasm. “This year’s Worldcon, three or four months ago, was the eightieth anniversary, I think. It started out as a small business conference for authors, publishers, and agents, with a few fans who had connections, but over the years it grew into a huge social gathering too, and the biggest awards for science fiction and fantasy have been presented there for more than sixty years. It inspired hundreds of other cons to start up all around the world—in some places a fan could go to a convention almost every weekend if they wanted to—though I’ve heard a lot of those old cons are gone now. They were the first fan conventions, so all the others you see these days, like the Daring Do conventions and stuff, exist because science-fiction fandom, uh, blazed the trail.” Her face heated slightly as the wilderness metaphor no doubt reminded her of her summer-camp beau, but her friends charitably chose to ignore the opportunity for a little ribbing.
“It sounds like a big party!” Pinkie observed to no one’s surprise.
“Partly,” Twilight replied. “But there’s a lot of other stuff going on too. There still is a lot of business: the dealers’ room, discussion panels on all kinds of subjects—some serious, some silly—the art show and auction, things like that. Some people wear costumes inspired by novels, or movies, or television shows, and there’s even a costume contest.” She ticked off other events and functions on her fingers. “And that’s just the official programming. It’s a good chance to meet up with long-distance friends or make new ones, and some people run ‘room parties’ in the evenings. It can get pretty hectic, though, so there’s a lot of ‘hi-bye’, too, from what I’ve heard.”
“Did you say a lot of ’em are gone now, Twi?” Applejack looked vaguely concerned. “What happened?”
“Oh. Yeah. I did say that.” Twilight’s mood dimmed a little. “The short answer is, the Internet. It got a lot easier to stay in touch with other fans, so going to the trouble and expense of attending conventions, especially ones that were far away, wasn’t as necessary. At the same time, science fiction and fantasy started to get more accepted as mainstream, so being a fan wasn’t as big a deal, and there wasn’t as much need for the social support of a dedicated community.”
After considering the downbeat picture her words conjured, she added hastily, “But there still are quite a few conventions out there—some with thousands of people, and some called ‘relaxicons’ because, with just a few hundred attendees, they’re not as frantic and busy. I’ve been to a few, both big and little, and they’re both great in different ways.”
Rainbow Dash leaned forward. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you have all that stored in your egghead, but wow that’s a lotta detail. And I didn’t know that’s where Daring Do conventions came from. I never really thought about it, but I guess I always figured they came outta nowhere.”
“Well, now you know,” Twilight told her, “and knowing . . .”
“. . . Is half the battle,” chorused several of them, followed by merry giggles.
Lectern’s New and Used Books, with its comfortably casual décor and bustle, came as a distinct relief to Sunset Shimmer. The previous evening’s formal dinner at a black-tie restaurant, accompanied by a probing interrogation, had been respectively a culinary delight and an emotionally trying roller-coaster ride. The affair had ended on a positive note with assurances she had passed the latter with flying colors, followed by a more soothing agenda-free—mostly—conversation over coffee, but Sunset still felt just a little frazzled as she stood in a tiny ground-floor restroom discreetly tucked away in a corner for the convenience of staff and customers.
The over-sink mirror really was too small for the purpose, but it would have to do. She inspected her appearance as best she could, shrugged and tugged to settle the fit of her short-waisted jacket, then fiddled with the slide of the bolo tie currently set with her enchanted pendant. After a last few tweaks she sighed and muttered in a rough imitation of Rarity, “You look fine, darling. Go out there and wow them.” Truth to tell, what inspired her nerves wasn’t the prospect of modeling the outfit her friends had helped the fashionista collect for her semi-formal night out—it was the near certainty of a second grilling, this time from her insatiably curious circle.
Exactly why she’d insisted on meeting here, rather than at her studio apartment or any of her friends’ homes, she wasn’t completely sure. She just felt a vague disinclination to deal with this discussion in a crowded bedroom or living room, however many sleepovers or visits she’d enjoyed in those places. Well, the public nature of the bookstore’s front parlor might help curb the enthusiasm with which she was bombarded by questions, and that was good. Moreover, unlike some of their other hang-outs it was indoors, a definite plus considering the winter cold.
Finally she squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and turned to pull the door open.
As she approached the crowd seated on wing chairs clustered to one side of the fireplace, the first sounds from them she heard clearly were a single sharp clap and Rarity’s delighted voice caroling, “See, girls, what did I tell you? Does she not look divine?” A low babel of approval from the rest, liberally spiced with oohs and ahs, endorsed her conclusions. Scattered customers looked up or over in mild bemusement from their own concerns; the cashier and Lectern himself, by now accustomed to the young women’s antics, barely seemed to notice.
Reluctantly the corners of Sunset’s mouth crooked up. She had to admit, even with a bulging messenger bag hanging over one shoulder and without the carefully applied cosmetics and coiffure provided yesterday afternoon by increasingly twitchy alabaster hands, she did cut a trim figure in the dark-red—almost black—western bolero jacket and tapering trousers set off by matching sash and rose-brass sun-and-moon sash pin. Cream flounce-collared blouse, black and brass bolo tie, shirt studs and cufflinks, and close-fitting patent-leather ankle boots completed the ensemble assembled by the whole group, mobilized on Rarity’s marching orders.
Rarity, of course, took charge as soon as Sunset reached the broad runner that extended out from the hearth and separated the pair of conversation groups flanking it. “Put down that bag, Sunset dear, and give us a turn.” The command was reinforced with a downward-pointing forefinger twirled in a circle.
Getting more into the spirit of it, Sunset unslung the bag and lowered it to one of the small drumlike coffee tables serving the chairs’ occupants, then spread her arms and pivoted slowly in her best imitation of the models she’d glimpsed occasionally on television or streaming video—usually played by Rarity, come to think of it. Her reward was another chorus of appreciation, and she blushed slightly as she completed the slow spin and faced them once more.
Each found a way to comment on her own contribution, Rainbow Dash even insisting Sunset pull up the trousers enough to show the entirely ordinary dress socks coyly hidden beneath. Safely out of the forward-leaning Dash’s line of sight, Rarity rolled her eyes but said nothing, inspiring Sunset to bite her lip against a sudden laugh.
With a certain resignation the focus of attention anticipated a flood of questions on the heels of the brief fashion show, but somewhat to her surprise only Rarity spoke up, in a genteel rendition of her distinctive gossipy lilt. “So, darling, how did it go?”
“The food was great,” Sunset allowed. “The rest, not so much, but at least it got better at the end.” Her weight shifted and her hands fluttered a little at her sides.
“Mm-hm. Well, you stand before us now and seem whole in mind and body, so it cannot have been a total disaster. I’m sure I can speak for all of us—” Rarity blasted the other seated girls impartially with a repressive scowl. “—when I say we are relieved that is the case.” Turning back, she favored Sunset with a searching look, then extended a hand and twiddled its fingers in a shooing motion. “Now that you have been a good sport and graced us with what I simply knew would be a breathtaking spectacle, we shall let you off the hook, but do hurry back!”
Dutifully the amateur model turned on a heel and headed back to the little washroom. Behind her a low hubbub erupted, not quite audible enough to make out. Pinkie Pie whined in disappointment. Rarity overrode the plaintive words a trifle crisply. Applejack weighed in firmly but more gently. Other voices joined in a quiet but rather intense debate.
Abruptly Sunset’s mood lifted, if not all the way then at least a little. Despite a voracious love of gossip, Rarity—backed up by the practical-minded AJ—clearly intended not to allow the questioning to get out of hand. She must not have concealed the tension and apprehension lingering from the night before as well as she thought. Well, maybe this wouldn’t be as unpleasant as she’d expected.
Lectern’s New and Used Books wasn’t a game store, though it did sell a few—including shiny new copies of the same well-worn tomes Twilight Sparkle pulled from a bulging shoulder bag on the floor by her seat near the fireplace. “Thanks, girls,” she said with a mix of eagerness and solemnity as she placed the books on the end of the table in front of her. “I thought you should get a chance to try this out and see for yourselves if you like it or not. I know most of you are just humoring me, but I promise this will be just a little one-shot adventure, and I did everything I could to make it as painless as possible to get into the game.” Her nervous grin was as awkward as her jest.
The battered old folding banquet table stood in the store’s front parlor, adjustable trestle legs racheted down to accommodate the low-slung wing chairs around it. At her bashfully mumbled request earlier, an amiable staffer had unearthed the relic from the small garage at the back of the property, dusted it off, and set it up, even going so far as to help rearrange the seating to minimize crowding. A few leaves of large-format gloss inkjet paper already lay in a loose pile on the middle of the scuffed laminate tabletop, uppermost sheet apparently blank other than a notice, hand-scrawled with a wedge-tip black marker, of MAPS: NO SPOILERS! Twilight opened a sizable velour drawstring bag and upended it over them, spilling out a motley collection of polyhedra dice in a wild variety of colors and conditions, before dropping it as well. These were followed by two dice cups and a mismatched pair of dice arenas; at her direction a cup and an arena were placed at each end of the table.
The friends ensconced on the other armchairs wore varied expressions, though none betrayed complete puzzlement. All six of them at least knew the title and basic premise of the game Sci-Twi had persuaded them to try out, minor cultural icon that it had become, if not always much more than that. Even Sunset Shimmer cocked her head with a whimsically curious expression—not because she hadn’t heard of it before, but because she had.
“Anyway, welcome to the latest edition of Ogres and Oubliettes! Before we start, let me give you a quick overview of what the game’s about and how it works.” Twilight proceeded to rattle off a tolerably coherent description of the idea behind a role-playing game and the base mechanics that drove the rules of this particular game—albeit a bit muddled once in a while by backing and filling. Sometimes it was simple forgetfulness; in other cases she suddenly recalled she was talking to newcomers who didn’t have her second-nature familiarity with the concepts and jargon involved. To the occasional baffled expressions, notably Applejack’s, she offered the assurance, “Don’t worry, I’ll explain again if and when it comes up during the adventure.”
Finally she pulled out a sheaf of card stock, jogged it, and fanned it on the scuffed laminate-surfaced particle board. “To speed things up, I generated a dozen characters for you girls to choose from, one of each class. That way, even whoever goes last won’t be left with just one, but there aren’t so many that tyranny of choice gets overwhelming. Each of you, roll a d20—that’s the icosahedron.” When most of the others gave her blank looks, she blinked back at them for a moment. “Oh, right. This kind.” She leaned forward, plucked one of the dice in question from the pile by the bag, and held it out on a palm.
“I win!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.
“Pinkie, it’s just to decide what order you choose characters, that’s all,” Twilight admonished her.
Completely ignoring the words, Pinkie made grabbing motions in the air. Twilight sighed, gathered up the character sheets, and handed them over. With a pucker of intense concentration Pinkie leafed rapidly through them and, to judge from her squeaky little editorial noises, speed-read each. In far too little time she twitched one out and held it up. “This one!”
Sci-Twi adjusted her glasses and squinted at it. “Uh, Pinkie, that’s the paladin.”
“Yepperoonie!” A bobble-head nod reinforced the affirmation. “I said to myself, ‘What’s this game about?’ Then I answered, ‘Well, Pinkie, it’s about doing something different than you normally would, right?’” Upon noticing the frowny-faces of impatience on her friends, she skipped to the end. “And this one looks like it’s about as different as I can get!”
“O-okay,” Twilight replied. From her tone it wasn’t okay at all, but she cleared her throat as she reclaimed the remaining characters. “Next?”
One by one the others made their selections, and Twilight’s face seemed to melt a little more with each choice.
“Oh! Ooh!” Rarity bounced on her seat as she held up the bard. “I pick this one.” Somehow, even without rising, she managed to strike a pose. “After all, daaaahling, I am all about glamour!” A moment later her face lit up again. “Oh, that gives me an idea! You did say these are characters, after all, and no character is complete without a backstory.” Immediately she pulled out her sketchbook and began scribbling in it, so focused she had to be prompted twice to return the other sheets, which she did without even looking up.
“Oh, look!” Fluttershy’s soft voice rang with delight. “This one has the ‘Speak With Animals’ spell.”
“What’s different about that?” Pinkie asked quizzically. “You do that for real!”
“Um, well, um—mostly the barbarian is about raging and smashing things.”
“Yep, that’ll work.”
Sunset leafed slowly through the remaining characters. “Huh,” she said at length. “So all of them have some kind of spells except this one. That’s pretty different, I guess.” She set down the fighter and handed back the dimishing stack.
Rainbow Dash let loose a manic grin as she waved around the sheet she’d claimed. “Oh yeah. I’ll go with this one. Explosions!”
Twilight caught a glimpse of the generic character portrait providing a scrap of visual interest. “The wizard? Dash, you do know that’s the most, uh, eggheady class in the whole game, right?”
A shrug of nonchalance greeted this observation. “Whatever.”
“Just so long as you can keep up with it.” A distinct note of doubt suffused the remark.
“Lessee.” Applejack’s whole face furrowed. “Kinda hard fer me t’ tell, not knowin’ th’ rules an’ all, but this one don’t look as complicated as th’ rest. Guess I’ll go with that.” She examined it with vague suspicion. “Says here this’s a . . . ranger, right?” When Twilight nodded confirmation, she set down the sheet with a shrug. “Don’t look much like a ‘ranger’ t’ me, but okay. Here ya go, Twi.” She leaned over and extended an arm to hand back the half-dozen unused characters.
Sci-Twi accepted them with some trepidation and leaned over to slip them back into her bag. When she straightened, she spoke with the stilted cadence of someone reading from a script. “Take a few minutes to look over your characters—don’t skip the class descriptions—and get to know them. You can see I didn’t finish them completely, because I wanted you all to have at least a few choices. Go ahead and pick what you want from the lists and cross off everything you don’t choose. If you have any questions or need any help, let me know.”
The girls remained more or less quiet as they concentrated on their picks. Questions and answers floated back and forth, and Sci-Twi shepherded a few of them through the process, especially Applejack. At last the game master looked around at the players and asked, “Is everyone ready?” Murmurs and nods answered her, and she took a breath. “Okay then. Let’s start.”
“My name is Bergud Battlehammer,” Twilight declaimed in a truly terrible burr. “And I—”
“Wait wait wait,” Rainbow Dash interrupted. “Do dwarves really sound like that? Weren’t they supposed to be from, uh . . . somewhere else?” She waved a hand to make up for her uncertain knowledge of mythology and geography, gleaned as much from Daring Do as from her studies . . . for better or worse.
Twi stalled out, mouth open. “These dwarves are different, okay?” she finally managed. “O&O wanders pretty far from the original sagas and legends where elves and dwarves and everything else come from anyway, so don’t worry about it.”
It might be the most hackneyed of O&O adventure openings, but it was new to Twilight’s players, so that was all right. Mysterious patron appears to gather a group of heroes for aid in reclaiming a long-lost clan legacy from the depths of a dwarven stronghold abandoned after the incursion of dark forces generations ago. She breathed a surreptitious sigh of relief when none of her friends seemed to spot the amazing resemblance of the premise to a classic fantasy novel. On the other hand, she was pretty sure none of them had read it or bothered to watch the recent dreadful movie adaptations, which was why she’d lifted the idea in the first place.
The main event, of course, would be the depths of the stronghold itself, but the overland trek to the not-so-distant ruins of the ancient habitation was a golden opportunity. Putting the players through a few toe-dipping preliminaries to shake down the group and to familiarize them with the rules in action would be invaluable. Little did she realize just how necessary those would prove to be.
“. . . So the last bandit takes off running,” Twilight said in a carefully neutral tone. “Seeing all his buddies get turned into mincemeat probably changed his mind about his career choice. Are you going to let him go?”
Rainbow Dash piped up instantly. “Heck no! I’m gonna—”
As she raised her hands, fingers wiggling, Sunset cut her off. “Nuh-uh. That last spell you threw almost cooked me along with those two bandits, RD!”
“Oh yeah.” Dash clasped her hands together and lowered them. “Hey, I said I was sorry.”
“Jus’ let ’im go, girls,” Applejack put in. “We put the fear o’, um, th’ gods inta ’im. He ain’t likely t’ stop runnin’ until he falls down exhausted.”
A remarkably deadpan Pinkie, whose cotton-candy hair somehow resembled her sisters’ waterfall styles a bit more than usual, opened her mouth—only to shut it again when Sunset turned a gimlet eye on her as well.
Fluttershy nodded, then added, “Um, but I’ll yell something after him.”
“Oh? What?” Twilight cocked her head with an interested expression.
“I, uh—maybe something like aaararrrgh?” In Fluttershy’s breathy voice it sounded more like a moan than a bellow.
“Very eloquent of you, darling.” Rarity flicked the fingers of one hand. “I too shall shout after him. Hmm. ‘Let that be a lesson to you, sirrah—crime does not pay! Should you continue your brutal ways, this fate shall befall you as well!’ My bard knows that much from experience, you see.” She drew breath to continue.
“He’s, uh, gone,” Twilight pointed out in this pause. “He’s probably out of earshot by now.”
“Humph.” Rarity deflated, slumping in her seat for a moment, before remembering herself and sitting straight again. “Well, it should be a lesson to him.”
Twilight looked over the tactical map depicting a rutted dirt road wending through forest. The colorful sheet was littered with figures, standing or tipped over, scattered all over it, along with markers of various sorts. Prominent among the latter were small translucent red sculptures depicting flames and, when those had run out, red or yellow pawns placed on a disquieting percentage of the map’s grid squares. She bit her lip and restrained the impulse to shake her head. Only the fact the bandits, though outnumbering the girls’ characters, were of lower level had dragged victory out of the confused, uncoordinated skirmish that had rolled through the woods.
“So . . . are any of you going to do anything about the fire?” she asked.
The girls looked at each other. Dash shrugged. A hurried check of character sheets revealed none of them had any plausible means of dealing with the nascent wildfire, not even Bergud. Twilight looked blank for a moment, then grabbed a d20 and rolled it, out of sight behind the colorful varnished cardstock shield blocking view of her notes. “Uh, okay. So the clouds overhead are looking pretty threatening by now. It’ll probably rain before too much longer.”
“You just made that up,” Dash objected. Applejack glanced first at her, then at Twilight, one eyebrow raised.
Twilight, expression prim, ignored the interjection. “Are you going to keep going, then?”
“It’s past suns—uh, sundown now,” Twilight pointed out. “Do you want to call a halt and set up camp sometime soon, or do you want to push on and get to the watchtower Bergud mentioned?”
After a minute or so of everyone talking at once and not getting anywhere, she halted the discussion with a rap on the table, then pointed at Sunset. “Stop or go on?” After prying an answer out of one player she proceeded to the next until she had what amounted to a vote. “Okay, more of you seem to be in favor of getting out of the rain at the watchtower. What will you do about the darkness? Torches? Spells?” Torches turned out to be the order of the . . . well, not day. Rainbow Dash had neglected utility spells completely in favor of maximum destruction, and what few illumination spells were available to the other casters amounted to roughly torch-level light anyway.
“Okay, now that you’re moving again, you’re using the same marching order, right?” Twilight hinted broadly.
“Ah, yeah,” Sunset said after looking around the table. “I guess so.” Another moment passed before she added, “You’re up, AJ.”
Twilight recited with a hint of tried patience, “Make a Survival check with advantage. Roll 2d20 and use the higher of the two, add the number next to ‘Survival’ on your character sheet, and tell me the result.”
Applejack followed the same instructions she’d been given more than once over the course of the session and peered down at the dice in the arena near her. “What if both of ’em are the same number?”
“Then it doesn’t matter; the result is the same either way,” Twilight told her. “What did you roll?”
“One,” AJ answered. A chorus of groans arose, to which she said, “What?”
“Oh.” Twilight sighed. “You all get another couple of miles along the road, just long enough for night to fall. Applejack, since you’re scouting a little ways ahead of the rest of the group, you go around a bend in the road before they reach it. There’s no torchlight and no line of sight to you. You rolled a one, so you completely miss the two redcaps hiding in the bushes by the side of the road. They have surprise, so they’ll get one free round before any of you can react. Then everyone rolls initiative.”
The pair of ghastly little manlike creatures burst from the brush and used their gigantic iron hobnail boots quite literally to punt like a football the first intruder they reached. One critical hit later, the hapless ranger flipped through the air, then skidded face-first back up the road, unconscious and reduced to zero hit points. Applejack’s mouth fell open as she was taken out of the fight with naught more than a flurry of kicks. The rest reacted with a babble of voices.
“I just don’t get it!” Dash sat back with a small thump. “I’m stumped.”
The rest of the girls, slouched in one fashion or another, nodded or made small noises of agreement. Their freshly healed but rather battered-looking characters stood before the huge stone doors of the dwarven stronghold’s main entrance, sealed now against all who would enter and still half-covered with vines and foliage. The carvings on the giant panels presented an enigmatic poem that, Bergud assured them, was supposed to grant entry to the supplicant who solved it. Alas, his father had failed to pass on the explanation due to an acute case of death, leaving it up to the player characters to figure out the answer—which, for the last half-hour, they had failed to do. Even Sunset’s brow furrowed in bafflement, though she stared at the map with narrowed eyes in furious thought.
The delay stretching beyond a few minutes had caught Twilight completely by surprise. Now she all but vibrated on her chair, biting her lip and failing to conceal an expression of chagrin. She loved complicated puzzles. She loved solving them. She loved creating them.
She completely forgot not everyone felt the same way about them.
She couldn’t let the impasse go on much longer. At the same time she couldn’t hand over the answer just like that. Either risked shattering the mood and spoiling the game. Maybe she should have made it simpler, a quick couplet instead of a long poem. Maybe she should have—
“Goodness, girls. I appreciate your efforts to keep your voices down in spite of your excitement, but this has been quite the spectacle.” With various manifestations of startlement the whole gaggle broke from their preoccupation to look up at the elderly gentleman who suddenly stood beside Twilight. Leaf-green eyes in a brick-red complexion twinkled behind small round reading glasses; a balding halo of white hair matched spotless button-down shirt. Braces and slacks of charcoal gray contrasted sharply, as did patent-leather closed-lace shoes.
“Mister Lectern!” Twilight was at a loss to proceed beyond that greeting outburst.
“My, my. It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a chance to see an Ogres and Oubliettes game.” The bookstore’s proprietor wore a reminiscent expression. “Why, it’s been . . . well, far too long since I sat at such a table myself.”
“You played O&O?” The young game master looked poleaxed. Most of her players simply looked bemused.
“Now, Miss Sparkle, your astonishment is hardly flattering!” The mock severity faded. “Oh yes. I acquired the old wargame rules and the original box set back in university, and I believe they’re still around somewhere.”
Twilight’s eyes were wide and her voice dropped to a reverent hush. “You have the first edition?”
“Almost certainly,” the old man assured her, “though I’m sure I’d have to dig them out of a box in a closet. The game seems to have changed a good deal, I must say—but then, it has been more than forty years.” With a smile he added, “Right now, I’m more interested in how your game is going, my dear.”
“Oh, well, it, um . . .” Twilight trailed off, but fortunately the others took up the slack. It might have been more helpful if they didn’t talk all at once, but after an initial blink of surprise Lectern listened gamely.
When they reached the current standstill and wound down, he cocked his head and, perhaps not quite as gravely as their youthful dignity might prefer, said, “I see. Well, I’m sure a group of such good friends can find the right words to convince that stubborn door to open. At any rate, one thing I do remember quite clearly was how often an adventure went completely awry. Still, all we cared about was having a good time, so as long as the games were memorable and made everyone laugh, it didn’t matter how far off into the weeds they wandered.”
He gave them all another wry smile. “I’ve taken enough of your time, girls, so I’ll leave you to it. Have fun.” With a last polite nod he faded away, as quietly as he’d appeared, to resume his managerial duties. Most of the young women stared after him, expressions ranging from befuddlement to realization.
Only Sunset still gazed at the map, muttering under her breath, “‘good friends—right words—’” Abruptly she sat bolt upright and smacked a palm against the tabletop. “I’ve got it! Girls!”
